This article covers the reasons why an automation might be deactivated and ways to resolve the issue.

 

 

 

Why is my automation deactivated?

There are several scenarios that can result in a deactivated automation: 

• Deactivated User
• Unauthorized User
• An assignee in a recipe no longer has board/item access 
• Chosen Group/Column/Subitem/Board/Workspace Was Deleted 
• Automation Loop 
• Item Limit Reached 
• Rate limit reached (too many automations were triggered at once)
• Deactivated Account
• Custom recipe created with 'every time period' block and condition
• Multiple competing automations

Jump to one of the sections above to learn more about how you can enable your automation again.

 

Deactivated User

In this case, the automation was set up by a user who has since been deactivated from your account.

 

How do I know when an automation has been deactivated for this reason?

You will not receive a notification stating that the automation was deactivated, but you can check which of your recipes have been impacted by looking at your board's Automation Center:

 

How can I enable this automation again?

Option 1: Reactivate the team member

You have the option to reactivate the deactivated team member. To do so, please follow the steps below: 

1. Click your Profile Picture (avatar)
2. Click "Administration"
3. Click "Filter"
4. Select "Inactive Users" under the "Status" header
5. Scroll to the right of the user's name to view a three-dot menu
6. Click the three dots
7. Click on "Activate user" 

 

Option 2: Transfer ownership of the automations

This action can only be completed by an account Admin. To transfer ownership of automations from one user to another, the deactivated user needs to be made active in the account first. After you have reactivated the user, you can click on the blue link in the error message (see the image at the beginning of this section above), or go to Administration > Users > Automations ownership:

Choose the current owner under the first drop-down and the new owner under the second drop-down. Click "Change owner" to complete the transfer.

Once you successfully transfer ownership, your automations will be reactivated.

 

 

Option 3: Create a new automation

You can create the same automation from scratch. Go to the board you want to use the automation on and follow the usual steps. To learn more about setting up automations, visit the monday.com Automations article. 

 

Unauthorized User

In this case, the user who created the automation:

1. has been unsubscribed from the board that has permissions enabled, where they previously created an automation
2. has had their permissions revoked from a column involved in the automation recipe,
3. was changed from a team member or guest to a viewer, OR
4. has had their ability to create automations revoked.

 

1. 1. 1.  

How do I know when an automation has been deactivated for this reason?

You will not receive a notification that informs you of this change. You can check which of your recipes have been impacted in the board's Automation Center:

 

How can I enable this automation again?

Option 1: Resubscribe the user to the board or give them permission to edit the requisite column

If the user has been removed from the board, you can resubscribe the team member to the board by clicking on "Who is on this board?" and entering in their name or email:

You can learn more about the subscription option here.

 

OR, if you're facing a column permission issue instead, you can change the column permissions. You have the option of removing the restriction entirely or changing the "Permissions Settings" to include the user in the list of those able to edit the column:

 

Option 2: Create a new automation

You can create the same automation from scratch. Go to the board you want to use the automation on and follow the usual steps. To learn more about setting up automations, visit the monday.com Automations article. 

 

Option 3: Change the user back to a member or guest 

If you changed the user to a viewer, thereby removing their ability to create or edit automation, you can change the user back to a member or guest. To do so, please follow these steps: 

1. Click your Profile Picture (avatar)
2. Click Administration
3. Click Users
4. Find the user you're looking for in the list by searching using their name or filtering the list using the filter icon to the right of the search field.
5. Click on the dropdown menu in the "User type" column.
6. Choose "Member" or "Guest"

 

Option 4: Transfer ownership of ALL of the user's automations

This action can only be completed by an account Admin and it is not board-specific. If you wish to transfer all of the user's automations across all boards to someone else, you can.

To transfer ownership of automations from one user to another, you can go to Admin > Users > Automations Ownership:

Choose the current owner under the first drop-down and the new owner under the second drop-down. Click "Change owner" to complete the transfer.

 

Assignee no longer has board/item access

In this scenario, a user who is assigned in the "assignee" field of an automation recipe is no longer subscribed to the private/sharable board that it is on, or they do not have the item viewing permissions needed for this automation to run properly.

 

How do I know when an automation has been deactivated for this reason?

If a user who is assigned to the "assignee" field of an automation no longer has access to that Private/Shareable board, or they do not have the Item Viewing Permissions needed for this automation to work, the following notification will appear when the automation is triggered:

You can also check which of your recipes have been impacted in the board's Automation Center:

 

How can I enable this automation again?

Option 1: Resubscribe the user to the board/item and turn the automation back on

If the automation was deactivated due to the recipe assignee not having access to the needed board or item, according to your specific scenario, you can either:

• Resubscribe them to the Private or Shareable board
• Change your item viewing permission settings so that they can access the item needed for the automation to work

Once you've made either of these changes so that the recipe assignee has proper access to the board/item needed for the automation to run, you then need to reactivate the automation by toggling it back to "On" in the Automations Center.

 

Option 2: Edit the automation, reassign it to another team member, and turn it back on

In the automations center, press to edit the automation recipe, assign it to a different team member who currently has the needed access to the board or item, and then toggle the automation back to "On" as so:

 

Your chosen target was deleted

If your automation depends on a group or column that has been deleted, your automation will be deactivated. If you're using a cross-board automation and the board selected in your automation recipe is deleted, your automation will be deactivated. If you're using a recipe that creates a new board and a workspace was targeted and then deleted, your automation will be deactivated.

 

How do I know when an automation has been deactivated for this reason?

After the targeted workspace/board/column/Subitem/group is deleted and the automation is triggered, you will receive a notification that informs you of this change. The notification will specify what the change was. For instance, for a deleted board you will see:

And for a deleted column, you will see:

You can also check which of your recipes have been impacted in the board's Automation Center:

 

How can I enable this automation again?

Option 1: Restore the deleted workspace/board/column/group from the Recycle Bin

You can check your Recycle Bin for deleted elements. Deleted elements will be stored in the Recycle Bin for 30 days. To recover a deleted element, locate it in your Recycle Bin by scrolling or searching and click the blue "Restore" button.

 

Option 2: Choose a new workspace/board/column/group

Click on the notification to view the impacted automation. This will allow you to edit the automation. Select a new workspace, board, column, or group (as required) to reactivate the automation.

 

Automation Loop

Dependency loops happen when items are made dependent on one another. If the top item is dependent on the last item in a sequence, your automation will be deactivated.

 

How do I know when an automation has been deactivated for this reason?

You will not receive a notification that informs you of this change, but we're working on making this a reality. You can, however, check which of your recipes have been impacted in the board's Automation Center:

 

How can I enable this automation again?

If you are experiencing an automation loop and your automation has not been deactivated, turn the automation off to discontinue the loop. Check out this article for more information: Dependency loops and how to avoid them

 

Item Limit Reached

If your automation tries to create an item and the item limit has been reached, the automation will be deactivated.

 

How do I know when an automation has been deactivated for this reason?

If you've reached your item limit and the automation attempts to create an item, you will receive a notification that informs you that your automation is no longer active:

 

How can I enable this automation again?

Integrations can only complete ~500 actions in a minute per board, while Automations can complete ~3,000 actions in a minute per board. (For a review of how actions are defined, please check out the Automation and Integration Actions article.) Once the limit is reached, if the automation has been triggered, it will not run. Instead, it will retry in the next minute. In this case, wait to see if the automation runs successfully at a later time.

Overall, each individual board has an item limit. Your limit per board is based on the tier of your account, whether Standard, Pro, or Enterprise. If you have reached your account's limit, delete or archive some items from the board and reactivate the automation in the Automation Center.

 

Rate limit reached 

How do I know when an automation has been deactivated for this reason?

At the moment, we have a limit in place in which each automation/integration recipe can perform a certain amount of triggers and actions per minute.

This limit may be reached if:

• you have an automation loop in place causing automation recipes to continue triggering
• you are using the API or webhooks to trigger your automations
• you use Batch Actions to trigger many automation recipes at once

If you have an automation recipe that reached this limit, that recipe will be disabled and you'll see the following error message appear in the board's Automation Center:

 

How can I enable this automation again?

To enable this automation again, simply toggle it back on in the board's Automation Center. Additionally, we highly recommend identifying the reason the automation was triggered this many times in one minute (whether it was through API, webhook, automation loop, or batch actions) and adjusting your workflow accordingly so that this limit will not be reached in the future.

 

Deactivated Account

If your account has been deactivated for two or more weeks and you decide to reactivate your account, upon your return you will find that all of the automations on your account have been deactivated.

 

How do I know when an automation has been deactivated for this reason?

If your account has been disabled for two or more weeks, your automation will be deactivated. If the account is reactivated, the automation creator will see that their automation is "Off" and that there is a red message at the bottom of the automation. The message reads:

"Your automation was disabled due to your account being deactivated. To reactivate your automation, you can just turn it back on."

The deactivated automation will look like this:

 

How can I enable this automation again?

To enable your automation, turn your automation "On" by toggling the button in the top right-hand corner.

 

Custom recipe with 'every time period' block condition

At this moment, we are unable to support custom automations that use an 'every time period' block with a condition (a required value that needs to be met in order for an action to occur). An example of such a recipe would look like this:

Therefore, if you have a custom automation like this that was created in the past, you will notice that it has now been deactivated and the following error will appear in the Automations Center:

 

 

How can I enable this automation again?

While it is not possible to enable the same custom automation that was deactivated here, you can go ahead and add a new automation recipe from the Automations Center which includes an 'every time period' block and a condition. You can find this kind of recipe, such as the one below, in the "Recurring" section of the Automations Center:

 

Multiple competing automations

If you set up two or more individual automations with the same trigger, one or more of your automations may be deactivated. For example, my automations may end up deactivated if I set up the following individual automations to run on one board:

1. When status changes to something, move item to group.
2. When status changes to something, change another status to something.
3. When status changes to something, archive the item.

Because all three of these automations start with the same trigger, "When status changes to something", they will all run at the same time. Essentially, these automations will race each other. As such, it's very likely that at least one of these automations will fail to run.

 

How do I know when an automation has been deactivated for this reason?

Once your automations begin to fail, you will see the following notification:

If you visit the automation center, you will see which automations are competing with each other:

And the activity log can show you which automation failed and indicate in red that the automation failed because it is competing with another automation:

 

How do I fix it?

To correct the problem, delete the automations that are competing with each other and build 1 custom automation that accomplishes both actions instead. For example, the two following automations:

1. When status changes to something, move item to group.
2. When status changes to something, change another status to something.

Can be combined into one custom automation:

1. When status changes to something, move item to group and then change another status to something.

 

 

More Assistance

 

If you have any questions, please reach out to our team right here. We’re available 24/7 and happy to help.